Vivos (underground shelter)


Vivos, also known as The Vivos Group, is a California-based company founded by Robert Vicino that proposes to build hardened underground shelters designed to withstand future disasters and life-extinction catastrophes. One shelter has been completed in Indiana, and others are proposed. , Vicino claimed that the company had approximately 25,000 subscribers, of whom 1,000 had bought shares entitling them to space in a shelter.

Locations

Indiana shelter

The first completed shelter, located in Indiana; was built during the Cold War to withstand a near direct-hit from a 20-megaton nuclear bomb. With accommodations for 80 people, the Indiana complex is completely sold out.

Vivos Europa One

Vivos plans to convert a surplus Cold War Soviet-built underground complex of located in Rothenstein, Germany, into a luxury shelter to house up to 1,000 people, a small zoo, storage for cultural treasures, and a gene bank for reconstituting plants and animals after a possible extinction event. Fire safety regulations were expected to present a problem for the project requiring a fire sprinkler system throughout the facility.

Vivos xPoint, South Dakota

In 2016, Vivos acquired a former US Army Base formerly known as Ft. Igloo Black Hills Ordnance Depot, located in South Dakota, with 575 concrete and steel underground bunkers that were originally built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1942 as a military fortress that stored explosives and munitions. Since 1967, when the base was retired, the base was used as a cattle ranch. Vivos has repurposed the 18 square mile complex into the "largest private shelter community on earth", for as many as 5,000 people to survive virtually any catastrophic event and the aftermath. Each bunker is 80' x 26.5' capable of comfortably accommodating up to 24 people with a supply of food, water, fuel, and hygienic supplies for a year or more. A 99-year lease on a bunker costs $1,000 a year, plus a $25,000 deposit paid up-front. “xPoint” was coined as the: Point in time that only the prepared will survive.”

Atchison, Kansas shelter

In 2013, Vivos acquired the purchase rights to a large portion of the Atchison Storage Facility, a former limestone mine in Atchison, Kansas, formerly owned by the US Army, and announced plans to convert it into "the world's largest private underground survivor shelter", housing 5,000 people. In June 2014, Vivos cancelled the Kansas project due to Army geologists' concerns about the structural stability of the former limestone mine having experienced a number of dome out collapses of the limestone.